they blame george w. bush. and he is, in a sense, the elephant in the room. something too embarrassing to mention, but something too overwhelming not to matter. and there's other poll data that kind of suggests that consciously or not, when people are going to the polls, they are thinking about maybe we're going to return to george w. bush if we vote for romney. >> how could the romney campaign, or how can the romney campaign, how can it distance itself from the ghost of g.w.? >> i think if they would have gone in and dealt with immediately and honestly from the beginning, they wouldn't have had a campaign that said, to try to pin the entire four years of the economy on president obama. they would know that average people understand, he came in with a huge burden, a collapsing economy, and they would have -- he would have said, look, the first two years, that was the problem of the president's predecessor. you can't blame him for that. but the last two years, that's obama's. there were ways for him to deal with it. but frankly, it was a very, very difficult l